Essay on Shelleys Frankenstein and Miltons Paradise Lost

Shelleys Frankenstein and Miltons nirvana Lost Even upon first glance, Mary Shelleys Frankenstein and John Miltons Paradise Lost seem to hire a complex relationship, which is discernible only in fractions at a time. Frankenstein is Mary Shelleys reaction to John Miltons epic poem, in which he wrote the Creation novel as we perceive it today. His characterizations of Adam and Eve and the interactions of Satan and God and the impending Fall seem to have almost taken a Biblical resemblance by themselves. By the time that Mary Shelley read Paradise Lost, it was indeed a stalwart in the canon of English Literature, so it should not return as a surprise to the reader the it should play such a large part in her construction of the Frankenstein myth, which has become an archetypal ghost report card on its own. What makes each of these narratives so fascinating to the reader is the author/authoresses innate ability to use the ultimate struggle -- that between God and Satan (or proper and Evil) -- which in turn involves the reader in a most personal manner. The characters in Paradise Lost, which is chronologically first, and Frankenstein, seem to appear over and over as aspects of themselves and other characters. The essence of these characters is on the surface relatively bland, but when aspects of Satan start to enter Man and they reconfigure each other, the interest picks up rapidly. Shelleys use of these characters is drastically different than that of Milton. Mary Shelley was a product of the 19th Century, when Romanticism, the Gothic Aesthetic, and Science took the forefront of Western Culture. Miltons era was different there was little secularization, and religious alternate was everywhere as the Protestant ... ...2. Elledge, Scott, ed. Paradise Lost. By John Milton. 1674. New York Norton, 1993. Fish, Stanley. Discovery as Form in Paradise Lost. Elledge 526-36. Ide, Richard S. On the Uses of Elizabethan play The Revaluation of Epic in Paradise Lost. Milton Studies 17 (1983) 121-37. Martindale, Charles. John Milton and the Transformation of Ancient Epic. London Croom Helm, 1986. Mellor, Anne K. Mary Shelley. Her Life, her Fiction, her Monsters. Methuen. New York, London, 1988. Milton, John. Paradise Lost. Elledge 3-304. Shawcross, John T. The Hero of Paradise Lost One More Time. Patrick and Sundell 137-47. Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus. Edited with an Introduction and notes by Maurice Hindle. Penguin books, 1992 Steadman, John M. Miltons Biblical and Classical Imagery. Pittsburgh Duquesne UP, 1984.